RIVERA: "I WILL LEAD OUR TSC STUDENTS BY EXAMPLE"



By Juan Montoya

We had met Ed Rivera briefly a few weeks ago while listening to Emilio Crixell and his Bluzanos at George Ramirez and Ben Neece's Half Moon in downtown Brownsville.
River struck us as an unassuming Browntown guy when we chatted with him and his buddy Ronnie Saenz, a former Cameron County Sheriff Department deputy who now owns Spanky's Burgers on Palm Blvd.
As far as we can remember from that night, Rivera never mentioned he was going to run for the board of trustees of the Texas Southmost College. However, we did gather that he had completed his basic requirements there before he transferred the University of Houston in 1976 where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and then went on to acquire a Master in Business Administration from Harvard in 1981.
We ran into him again just recently and while we waited for our respective companions at a local restaurant, took time to connect again and learn more about him.
It seems that Rivera –a Brownsville native son – lived out toward the El Jardin Elementary School area and that his grandparents lived out toward rural Browne Road.
"In those days people still used outhouses and being from the city, when we went out to visit them, we had to use them, too" he recalled. "It doesn't seem that long ago."
Rivera was one of the two first Brownsville High School pupils to attend TSC as dual-enrollment students way back when. It's a program that he believes in strongly.
"One day a recruiter from TSC came in and called two of us – myself and a female student – to ask whether we wanted to attend college courses while in high school," he said. "We both did."
When his dad, who joined the U.S. Army when he was in the ninth grade and was not well off financially learned his son had been admitted to the University of Houston, he gathered all his savings – $900 – and went to one of the two job sites where his son was working part-time to pay for tuition at TSC. (One of them was being an usher at the old Majestic Theater at night.)
There, he gave it to him to help with the costs in the big city.
"That's all I can give you, son," Rivera remembers him saying.
To his credit, Rivera's dad would eventually earn his GED after his stint in the military service.
Once he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston, Rivera staked out a lucrative position selling specialized chemicals to companies in the La Porte and Deer Park areas of that city's petrochemical complex. It was a cushy job, with little stress. In fact, he said, it was too cushy.
"I would meet my clients over lunch and spend a few hours with them an then go back and do it again the next day. Since they were very specialized chemicals, I was like a sole source for them. "
All that came to an end when one of his friends sent him an application for Harvard University School of Business
"I told him I would think about it," he said.
But making the cut there was no easy task. After his then-girlfriend convinced him to fill it out and send it back, he had to go through three pools of applicants and then he received the confirmation he was in.
"It was the opportunity of a lifetime and the easy life ended," he laughed. "From there on it was work, work, work."
Rivera said that is the message kids thinking of attending TSC should be getting.
"Not everyone wants to be a Rhodes scholar," he said. "If you want to get certified as a pipe fitter, or to upgrade your skills to provide a better living for your family, the community college should give you that opportunity. If you want continue your life in academics, it should provide the rung for you to climb that ladder. We should all be behind and support both TSC and the University of Texas at Brownsville."
In fact, Rivera is a board member of  the University of Texas-Pan American Foundation and, if elected to the TSC board, would have a presence in both schools as they seek to establish the UT RGV mega school through the UT System.
"They told me that I could serve on both institutions and that they had no objections to me being in both."
Rivera faces JJ De Leon, a longtime protege of Brownsville Independent School District administrator Bertha Peña in the May 10 election.
On its face, it would appear that Rivera's qualifications far outshine De Leon's. His resume includes a long list of corporate accomplishments.
- 40 years of real-world experience in finance,  procurement, manufacturing, business development and executive management.
- Investment banking
- Global business development practice in Western   Europe, Russia, China and Central and South America
- Board of Director participation in business and   educational boards for over 20 years
- Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Houston and a Master's Business Administration from Harvard
Rivera  currently serves on: the University of Texas Pan Am Foundation, the Brownsville Museum of Fine Arts, RGV Lead Advisory Board, RGV Mentors Steering Committee, Hooked for Life Advisory Board, Texas Southmost College Trustee.
He served formerly on the Laguna Vista Community Development Corporation, president, the Laguna Vista Planning and Zoning, and the American Marine Institute RGV chapter.